Bacillus velezensis JTYP2 was isolated from the leaves of Echeveria laui in Qingzhou, China, and may control some of the fungal pathogens of the plant. Here, we present the complete genome sequence of B. velezensis JTYP2. Several gene clusters related to its biosynthesis of antimicrobial compounds were predicted. Copyright © 2017 Wang et al.
Tryptophan dimers (TDs) are an important class of natural products with diverse bioactivities and share conserved biosynthetic pathways. We report the identification of a partial gene cluster (spm) responsible for the biosynthesis of a class of unusual TDs with non-planar skeletons including spiroindimicins (SPMs), indimicins (IDMs), and lynamicins (LNMs) from the deep-sea derived Streptomyces sp. SCSIO 03032. Bioinformatics analysis, targeted gene disruptions, and heterologous expression studies confirmed the involvement of the spm gene cluster in the biosynthesis of SPM/IDM/LNMs, and revealed the indispensable roles for the halogenase/reductase pair SpmHF, the amino acid oxidase SpmO, and the chromopyrrolic acid (CPA) synthase SpmD, as well as the positive regulator SpmR and the putative transporter SpmA. However, the spm gene cluster was unable to confer a heterologous host the ability to produce SPM/IDM/LNMs. In addition, the P450 enzyme SpmP and the monooxygenase SpmX2 were found to be non-relevant to the biosynthesis of SPM/IDM/LNMs. Sequence alignment and structure modeling suggested the lack of key conserved amino acid residues in the substrate-binding pocket of SpmP. Furthermore, feeding experiments in the non-producing ?spmO mutant revealed several biosynthetic precursors en route to SPMs, indicating that key enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of SPMs should be encoded by genes outside of the identified spm gene cluster. Finally, the biosynthetic pathways of SPM/IDM/LNMs are proposed to lay a basis for further insights into their intriguing biosynthetic machinery.
Telomestatin, a strong telomerase inhibitor with G-quadruplex stabilizing activity, is a potential therapeutic agent for treating cancers. Difficulties in isolating telomestatin from microbial cultures and in chemical synthesis are bottlenecks impeding the wider use. Therefore, improvement in telomestatin production and structural diversification are required for further utilization and application. Here, we discovered the gene cluster responsible for telomestatin biosynthesis, and achieved production of telomestatin by heterologous expression of this cluster in the engineered Streptomyces avermitilis SUKA strain. Utilization of an optimal promoter was essential for successful production. Gene disruption studies revealed that the tlsB, tlsC, and tlsO-T genes play key roles in telomestatin biosynthesis. Moreover, exchanging TlsC core peptide sequences resulted in the production of novel telomestatin derivatives. This study sheds light on the expansion of chemical diversity of natural peptide products for drug development.
Infections of dogs with virulent strains of Babesia canis are characterized by rapid onset and high mortality, comparable to complicated human malaria. As in other apicomplexan parasites, most Babesia virulence factors responsible for survival and pathogenicity are secreted to the host cell surface and beyond where they remodel and biochemically modify the infected cell interacting with host proteins in a very specific manner. Here, we investigated factors secreted by B. canis during acute infections in dogs and report on in silico predictions and experimental analysis of the parasite’s exportome. As a backdrop, we generated a fully annotated B. canis genome sequence of a virulent Hungarian field isolate (strain BcH-CHIPZ) underpinned by extensive genome-wide RNA-seq analysis. We find evidence for conserved factors in apicomplexan hemoparasites involved in immune-evasion (e.g. VESA-protein family), proteins secreted across the iRBC membrane into the host bloodstream (e.g. SA- and Bc28 protein families), potential moonlighting proteins (e.g. profilin and histones), and uncharacterized antigens present during acute crisis in dogs. The combined data provides a first predicted and partially validated set of potential virulence factors exported during fatal infections, which can be exploited for urgently needed innovative intervention strategies aimed at facilitating diagnosis and management of canine babesiosis.
A pleomorphic Gram-negative, motile coccobacillus was isolated from the gills of a wild-caught bluespotted ribbontail ray after its sudden death during quarantine. Strain 141012304 was observed to grow aerobically, to be clearly positive for cytochrome oxidase, catalase, urease and was initially identified as “Brucella melitensis” or “Ochrobactrum anthropi” by Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry and VITEK2-compact(®), respectively. Affiliation to the genus Brucella was confirmed by bcsp31 and IS711 PCR as well as by Brucella species-specific multiplex PCR, therein displaying a characteristic banding pattern recently described for Brucella strains obtained from amphibian hosts. Likewise, based on recA sequencing, strain 141012304 was found to form a separate lineage, within the so called ‘atypical’ Brucella, consisting of genetically more distantly related strains. The closest similarity was detected to brucellae, which have recently been isolated from edible bull frogs. Subsequent next generation genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis confirmed that the ray strain represents a novel Brucella lineage within the atypical group of Brucella and in vicinity to Brucella inopinata and Brucella strain BO2, both isolated from human patients. This is the first report of a natural Brucella infection in a saltwater fish extending the host range of this medically important genus.
Recently, several endophytic fungi have been demonstrated to produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with properties similar to fossil fuels, called “mycodiesel,” while growing on lignocellulosic plant and agricultural residues. The fact that endophytes are plant symbionts suggests that some may be able to produce lignocellulolytic enzymes, making them capable of both deconstructing lignocellulose and converting it into mycodiesel, two properties that indicate that these strains may be useful consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) hosts for the biofuel production. In this study, four endophytes Hypoxylon sp. CI4A, Hypoxylon sp. EC38, Hypoxylon sp. CO27, and Daldinia eschscholzii EC12 were selected and evaluated for their CBP potential. Analysis of their genomes indicates that these endophytes have a rich reservoir of biomass-deconstructing carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZys), which includes enzymes active on both polysaccharides and lignin, as well as terpene synthases (TPSs), enzymes that may produce fuel-like molecules, suggesting that they do indeed have CBP potential. GC-MS analyses of their VOCs when grown on four representative lignocellulosic feedstocks revealed that these endophytes produce a wide spectrum of hydrocarbons, the majority of which are monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes, including some known biofuel candidates. Analysis of their cellulase activity when grown under the same conditions revealed that these endophytes actively produce endoglucanases, exoglucanases, and ß-glucosidases. The richness of CAZymes as well as terpene synthases identified in these four endophytic fungi suggests that they are great candidates to pursue for development into platform CBP organisms.
The study reported the genetic and functional characterization of a novel CTX-M-199 ß-lactamase, which was encoded by a blaCTX-M-64 variant gene found in a conjugative mcr-1-bearing IncI2 plasmid and exhibited resistance to ß-lactamase inhibitors, tazobactam and sulbactam. Copyright © 2017 American Society for Microbiology.
Evolutionary shifts in bacterial virulence are often associated with a third biological player, for instance temperate phages, that can act as hyperparasites. By integrating as prophages into the bacterial genome they can contribute accessory genes, which can enhance the fitness of their prokaryotic carrier (lysogenic conversion). Hyperparasitic influence in tripartite biotic interactions has so far been largely neglected in empirical host-parasite studies due to their inherent complexity. Here we experimentally address whether bacterial resistance to phages and bacterial harm to eukaryotic hosts is linked using a natural tri-partite system with bacteria of the genus Vibrio, temperate vibriophages and the pipefish Syngnathus typhle. We induced prophages from all bacterial isolates and constructed a three-fold replicated, fully reciprocal 75 × 75 phage-bacteria infection matrix.According to their resistance to phages, bacteria could be grouped into three distinct categories: highly susceptible (HS-bacteria), intermediate susceptible (IS-bacteria), and resistant (R-bacteria). We experimentally challenged pipefish with three selected bacterial isolates from each of the three categories and determined the amount of viable Vibrio counts from infected pipefish and the expression of pipefish immune genes. While the amount of viable Vibrio counts did not differ between bacterial groups, we observed a significant difference in relative gene expression between pipefish infected with phage susceptible and phage resistant bacteria.These findings suggest that bacteria with a phage-susceptible phenotype are more harmful against a eukaryotic host, and support the importance of hyperparasitism and the need for an integrative view across more than two levels when studying host-parasite evolution.
Caldicellulosiruptor bescii is the most thermophilic cellulose degrader known and is of great interest because of its ability to degrade nonpretreated plant biomass. For biotechnological applications, an efficient genetic system is required to engineer it to convert plant biomass into desired products. To date, two different genetically tractable lineages of C. bescii strains have been generated. The first (JWCB005) is based on a random deletion within the pyrimidine biosynthesis genes pyrFA, and the second (MACB1018) is based on the targeted deletion of pyrE, making use of a kanamycin resistance marker. Importantly, an active insertion element, ISCbe4, was discovered in C. bescii when it disrupted the gene for lactate dehydrogenase (ldh) in strain JWCB018, constructed in the JWCB005 background. Additional instances of ISCbe4 movement in other strains of this lineage are presented herein. These observations raise concerns about the genetic stability of such strains and their use as metabolic engineering platforms. In order to investigate genome stability in engineered strains of C. bescii from the two lineages, genome sequencing and Southern blot analyses were performed. The evidence presented shows a dramatic increase in the number of single nucleotide polymorphisms, insertions/deletions, and ISCbe4 elements within the genome of JWCB005, leading to massive genome rearrangements in its daughter strain, JWCB018. Such dramatic effects were not evident in the newer MACB1018 lineage, indicating that JWCB005 and its daughter strains are not suitable for metabolic engineering purposes in C. bescii Furthermore, a facile approach for assessing genomic stability in C. bescii has been established. IMPORTANCE Caldicellulosiruptor bescii is a cellulolytic extremely thermophilic bacterium of great interest for metabolic engineering efforts geared toward lignocellulosic biofuel and bio-based chemical production. Genetic technology in C. bescii has led to the development of two uracil auxotrophic genetic background strains for metabolic engineering. We show that strains derived from the genetic background containing a random deletion in uracil biosynthesis genes (pyrFA) have a dramatic increase in the number of single nucleotide polymorphisms, insertions/deletions, and ISCbe4 insertion elements in their genomes compared to the wild type. At least one daughter strain of this lineage also contains large-scale genome rearrangements that are flanked by these ISCbe4 elements. In contrast, strains developed from the second background strain developed using a targeted deletion strategy of the uracil biosynthetic gene pyrE have a stable genome structure, making them preferable for future metabolic engineering studies. Copyright © 2017 American Society for Microbiology.
Two opposing evolutionary constraints exert pressure on plant pathogens: one to diversify virulence factors in order to evade plant defenses, and the other to retain virulence factors critical for maintaining a compatible interaction with the plant host. To better understand how the diversified arsenals of fungal genes promote interaction with the same compatible wheat line, we performed a comparative genomic analysis of two North American isolates of Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt).The patterns of inter-isolate divergence in the secreted candidate effector genes were compared with the levels of conservation and divergence of plant-pathogen gene co-expression networks (GCN) developed for each isolate. Comprative genomic analyses revealed substantial level of interisolate divergence in effector gene complement and sequence divergence. Gene Ontology (GO) analyses of the conserved and unique parts of the isolate-specific GCNs identified a number of conserved host pathways targeted by both isolates. Interestingly, the degree of inter-isolate sub-network conservation varied widely for the different host pathways and was positively associated with the proportion of conserved effector candidates associated with each sub-network. While different Pgt isolates tended to exploit similar wheat pathways for infection, the mode of plant-pathogen interaction varied for different pathways with some pathways being associated with the conserved set of effectors and others being linked with the diverged or isolate-specific effectors.Our data suggest that at the intra-species level pathogen populations likely maintain divergent sets of effectors capable of targeting the same plant host pathways. This functional redundancy may play an important role in the dynamic of the “arms-race” between host and pathogen serving as the basis for diverse virulence strategies and creating conditions where mutations in certain effector groups will not have a major effect on the pathogen’s ability to infect the host.
Listeria monocytogenes is a food-borne pathogen that can cause meningitis. The listerial genotype ST6 has been linked to increasing rates of unfavourable outcome over time. We investigated listerial genetic variation and the relation with clinical outcome in meningitis.We sequenced 96 isolates from adults with listerial meningitis included in two prospective nationwide cohort studies by whole genome sequencing, and evaluated associations between bacterial genetic variation and clinical outcome. We validated these results by screening listerial genotypes of 445 cerebrospinal fluid and blood isolates from patients over a 30-year period from the Dutch national surveillance cohort.We identified a bacteriophage, phiLMST6 co-occurring with a novel plasmid, pLMST6, in ST6 isolates to be associated with unfavourable outcome in patients (p 2.83e-05). The plasmid carries a benzalkonium chloride tolerance gene, emrC, conferring decreased susceptibility to disinfectants used in the food-processing industry. Isolates harbouring emrC were growth inhibited at higher levels of benzalkonium chloride (median 60 mg/L versus 15 mg/L; p <0.001), and had higher MICs for amoxicillin and gentamicin compared with isolates without emrC (both p <0.001). Transformation of pLMST6 into naive strains led to benzalkonium chloride tolerance and higher MICs for gentamicin.These results show that a novel plasmid, carrying the efflux transporter emrC, is associated with increased incidence of ST6 listerial meningitis in the Netherlands. Suggesting increased disease severity, our findings warrant consideration of disinfectants used in the food-processing industry that select for resistance mechanisms and may, inadvertently, lead to increased risk of poor disease outcome. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.
Chemolithoautotrophic primary production sustains dense invertebrate communities at deep-sea hydrothermal vents and hydrocarbon seeps. Symbiotic bacteria that oxidize dissolved sulfur, methane, and hydrogen gases nourish bathymodiolin mussels that thrive in these environments worldwide. The mussel symbionts are newly acquired in each generation via infection by free-living forms. This study examined geographical subdivision of the thiotrophic endosymbionts hosted by Bathymodiolus mussels living along the eastern Pacific hydrothermal vents. High-throughput sequencing data of 16S ribosomal RNA encoding gene and fragments of six protein-coding genes of symbionts were examined in the samples collected from nine vent localities at the East Pacific Rise, Galápagos Rift, and Pacific-Antarctic Ridge.Both of the parapatric sister-species, B. thermophilus and B. antarcticus, hosted the same numerically dominant phylotype of thiotrophic Gammaproteobacteria. However, sequences from six protein-coding genes revealed highly divergent symbiont lineages living north and south of the Easter Microplate and hosted by these two Bathymodiolus mussel species. High heterogeneity of symbiont haplotypes among host individuals sampled from the same location suggested that stochasticity associated with initial infections was amplified as symbionts proliferated within the host individuals. The mussel species presently contact one another and hybridize along the Easter Microplate, but the northern and southern symbionts appear to be completely isolated. Vicariance associated with orogeny of the Easter Microplate region, 2.5-5.3 million years ago, may have initiated isolation of the symbiont and host populations. Estimates of synonymous substitution rates for the protein-coding bacterial genes examined in this study were 0.77-1.62%/nucleotide/million years.Our present study reports the most comprehensive population genetic analyses of the chemosynthetic endosymbiotic bacteria based on high-throughput genetic data and extensive geographical sampling to date, and demonstrates the role of the geographical features, the Easter Microplate and geographical distance, in the intraspecific divergence of this bacterial species along the mid-ocean ridge axes in the eastern Pacific. Altogether, our results provide insights into extrinsic and intrinsic factors affecting the dispersal and evolution of chemosynthetic symbiotic partners in the hydrothermal vents along the eastern Pacific Ocean.
The third generation PacBio SMRT long reads can effectively address the read length issue of the second generation sequencing technology, but contain approximately 15% sequencing errors. Several error correction algorithms have been designed to efficiently reduce the error rate to 1%, but they discard large amounts of uncorrected bases and thus lead to low throughput. This loss of bases could limit the completeness of downstream assemblies and the accuracy of analysis.Here, we introduce HALC, a high throughput algorithm for long read error correction. HALC aligns the long reads to short read contigs from the same species with a relatively low identity requirement so that a long read region can be aligned to at least one contig region, including its true genome region’s repeats in the contigs sufficiently similar to it (similar repeat based alignment approach). It then constructs a contig graph and, for each long read, references the other long reads’ alignments to find the most accurate alignment and correct it with the aligned contig regions (long read support based validation approach). Even though some long read regions without the true genome regions in the contigs are corrected with their repeats, this approach makes it possible to further refine these long read regions with the initial insufficient short reads and correct the uncorrected regions in between. In our performance tests on E. coli, A. thaliana and Maylandia zebra data sets, HALC was able to obtain 6.7-41.1% higher throughput than the existing algorithms while maintaining comparable accuracy. The HALC corrected long reads can thus result in 11.4-60.7% longer assembled contigs than the existing algorithms.The HALC software can be downloaded for free from this site: https://github.com/lanl001/halc .
To date , over 78 genomes of nucleopolyhedroviruses (NPVs) have been sequenced and deposited in NCBI. How to define a new virus from the infected larvae in the field is usually the first question. Two NPV strains, which were isolated from casuarina moth (L. xylina) and golden birdwing larvae (Troides aeacus), respectively, displayed the same question. Due to the identity of polyhedrin (polh) sequences of these two isolates to that of Lymantria dispar MNPV and Bombyx mori NPV, they are named LdMNPV-like virus and TraeNPV, provisionally. To further clarify the relationships of LdMNPV-like virus and TraeNPV to closely related NPVs, Kimura 2-parameter (K-2-P) analysis was performed. Apparently, the results of K-2-P analysis that showed LdMNPV-like virus is an LdMNPV isolate, while TraeNPV had an ambiguous relationship to BmNPV. Otherwise, MaviNPV, which is a mini-AcMNPV, also exhibited a different story by K-2-P analysis. Since K-2-P analysis could not cover all species determination issues, therefore, TraeNPV needs to be sequenced for defining its taxonomic position. For this purpose, different genomic sequencing technologies and bioinformatic analysis approaches will be discussed. We anticipated that these applications will help to exam nucleotide information of unknown species and give an insight and facilitate to this issue.
We report a new Streptomyces species named S. formicae that was isolated from the African fungus-growing plant-ant Tetraponera penzigi and show that it produces novel pentacyclic polyketides that are active against MRSA and VRE. The chemical scaffold of these compounds, which we have called the formicamycins, is similar to the fasamycins identified from the heterologous expression of clones isolated from environmental DNA, but has significant differences that allow the scaffold to be decorated with up to four halogen atoms. We report the structures and bioactivities of 16 new molecules and show, using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, that biosynthesis of these compounds is encoded by a single type 2 polyketide synthase biosynthetic gene cluster in the S. formicae genome. Our work has identified the first antibiotic from the Tetraponera system and highlights the benefits of exploring unusual ecological niches for new actinomycete strains and novel natural products.
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